"We're in the bullion vault of the Bank of England. I've never seen so much gold -- in fact, I've never seen so much of any element!" So exclaims Professor Martyn Poliakoff, host of this The Periodic Table of Videos visit to Britain's equivalent of Fort Knox. The inside of the vault is surprisingly bland -- just a bunch of blue metal shelves holding gold bars. It looks a little like a gym that happens to contain an insane amount of gold.

Fun fact discussed near the end of this video: if you took all the gold that has ever been mined, melted it, and made a cube, it would only occupy 20 cubic meters a 20-meter cube (8,000 cubic meters). That's bonkers. Think about that for a moment -- all the gold we have ever mined from the entire Earth takes up a tiny space, roughly comparable to a modestly sized city building. Enjoy: